| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: provinces and the habits of a virtuous life, keep their youth until
they are past forty. She was like the last rose of autumn,--pleasant
to the eye, though the petals have a certain frostiness, and their
perfume is slight. She dressed well, got her fashions from Paris, set
the tone to Saumur, and gave parties. Her husband, formerly a
quartermaster in the Imperial guard, who had been desperately wounded
at Austerlitz, and had since retired, still retained, in spite of his
respect for Grandet, the seeming frankness of an old soldier.
"Good evening, Grandet," he said, holding out his hand and affecting a
sort of superiority, with which he always crushed the Cruchots.
"Mademoiselle," he added, turning to Eugenie, after bowing to Madame
Eugenie Grandet |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Bucky O'Connor by William MacLeod Raine: Colonel Onate and Lieutenant Chaves. In none of the three did he
find any room for hope. Carlo was a hater of Americans and a
butcher by temperament and choice, Chaves a personal enemy of the
prisoner, and Onate looked as grim an old scoundrel as Jeffreys
the hanging judge of James Stuart. Governor Megales, though not
technically a member of the court, was present, and took an
active part in the prosecution. He was a stout, swarthy little
man, with black, beady eyes that snapped restlessly to and fro,
and from his manner to the officers in charge of the trial it was
plain that he was a despot even in his own official family.
The court did not trouble itself with forms of law. Chaves was
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: And the reddening of the fire.
Who talks to me of reason now?
It would be more delight
To have died in Cleopatra's arms
Than be alive to-night.
I KNOW NOT HOW, BUT AS I COUNT
I KNOW not how, but as I count
The beads of former years,
Old laughter catches in my throat
With the very feel of tears.
SPRING SONG
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